


polarity

by erzi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 16:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19771822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: "Are you a sentimental drunk, Shuuichi-san?"His ears ring with his own name, unspoken in this manner in some time. Reminiscent of their before. "No.""A pity. I was certain you'd segue into woeful rhetorical questions.""Like what? 'Were you happy then?'" The question comes far too easily to be spontaneous.Seiji takes the bottle, sipping thoughtfully. "Yes," he says, drink down. "Like that."





	polarity

There is a tension in the air, a prickling electricity buzzing down from the darkening heavens. The heavy clouds, slowly colliding with one another, send rumbles growing in fervor all the way to Shuuichi's ears. They do not yet weep, but for the stickiness on his skin, he feels they will soon.

He picks up his pace, hoping the rain comes after he's on the bus well on his way home. This exorcism had not gone as smoothly as he'd expected. The weather turning on him, unready for it as he is, is the last thing he needs.

So of course it's exactly what he gets.

It doesn't start as a drizzle increasing to steady rain that becomes a storm. The anger the clouds have held is unleashed all at once, in sheets, lit white by flashes of lightning, immediately inundating these country hills. The thunder has reached him; it's above him, sonorous even in his bones as if he is trapped inside its sound. Using his hands as a meager umbrella does nothing. Rain slides off his skin, seeps hungrily into his clothes, weighs down his hat. The ground muddies, earth-and-water splashing his legs as he runs, careless, to where the bus stop is supposed to be.

The countryside is indistinct behind the torrent, and Shuuichi follows the squelching path blindly, quickly, muttering disbelief at his luck. He runs and he sees it, an old wooden thing with peeling paint, and no sight has ever been more welcome. Ducking under the refuge offers little solace: the wood roof is holed from rot, and rain makes it through, pooling on the steel bench. He can't sit, and he can't find a way to stand so that no water falls on him. He squirms on his feet, arms crossed tight, rivulets on his glasses warping the world. They begin to fog too, the warmth the land had hogged through the day steaming off from the rain. Huffing, he looks over them. A shiver takes him.

 _I hope the bus is here soon_ , he thinks, rubbing his arms. He hopes, but he does not really believe. The road might be closed due to flooding, the bus route suspended.

Should he head back? The person who'd hired him could house him for the night with the weather like this, surely.

And then what would the newspapers say? Natori Shuuichi, spending a night in an unmarried woman's dilapidated manor.

He sighs. Here he'll stay, then. The bus will come eventually.

He hears another rumble, but one too near and too neat to be thunder. It's accompanied by a yellow-white haze in the low horizon, its dimness sharpening, two distinct headlights appearing on the road. It's a vehicle too sleek to be a bus, but Shuuichi steps out of the shelter, rain beating his face, and he waves, having nothing to lose in asking a stranger for a ride. It'll even make a good story for them, having rescued an actor from being stranded in a storm.

He can't tell if the car is black or if the sky's sapping of light is darkening the car as well. But he can tell who that umbrella blooming like a black eye before him belongs to.

"You're in quite the situation," Seiji says, stepping out of his car, smile cool, umbrella extended to cover them both. Because the umbrella's reach is limited, he's standing too close for Shuuichi's comfort. He can pick out the fine threads on his tailored suit, the thinness of his lashes.

The rain drums on the umbrella, a toneless song changing rhythm while neither Shuuichi or Seiji's expressions do anything at all.

Shuuichi makes a noncommittal sound, making himself look somewhere else: there, a tree in the distance darkened by rain, leafy branches shaking in the wind. The truth is he'd like out of this situation. He needs it, rather; Seiji's car has driven in like a savior, funereal as it is, in place of a bus that will certainly be late. The invitation to go with Seiji is there, plain as the hills stretching before them, and just as wordless, seen instead.

But it's _Seiji_.

In his curled mouth and single eye Shuuichi sees this conundrum reflected from Seiji's viewpoint: that he is helpless and completely at Seiji's mercy, that his willingness to offer him this kindness rests on Shuuichi dusting off the past and his pride and simply asking.

His teeth click, his hands seek the drier depths of his pockets. The roots of his pride run deep; the broken branches of his and Seiji's yesterdays scratch at him today if he's not careful, trickling sap that traps him.

Does he seek help at his weakest, Seiji's foot pressing him down to the sodden earth? Or does he brave the rain, unwilling to ask what Seiji wants?

The horizon is blurry from rain, not worth looking at, but it's what he does as he grumbles, "Can you drive me home?"

"I can't, but my driver can."

Now Shuuichi glares coolly at Seiji, apprehension at what this simple request would bring about slowly being realized. "Can your driver take me home?"

Seiji's smile doesn't waver, but his left eyebrow rises expectantly.

"Please?" Shuuichi adds, guessing this is what Seiji was waiting for. He locks his jaw as soon as it's out of his mouth to keep teeth-chattering and an exasperated insult away – or worse, an irritated dismissal at what he'd asked.

"Certainly." He steps closer to Shuuichi, going behind his elbow, which a single of his fingers taps. "After you."

The touch startles him – from it happening at all, from its sensation – and that startle moves him forward to the opened car door, its interior blacker than the stormy sky. Seiji's umbrella keeps him dry as he slides in, Seiji following, shaking the umbrella loose of raindrops before closing the door, trapping Shuuchi here in such austere and elegant darkness, the rain muffled to something that could pass for the murmur of his heart in his ears.

"We can go now," Seiji tells the driver, who starts the car up. They drive through the rain in near soundlessness. Were it not for the passing landscape verdant and wet, Shuuichi wouldn't know the inclement weather. His eyes move to Seiji across from him, crisp as the face of a magazine, and despite his unflappable demeanor he might be more severe than the raging storm. Seiji has folded his hands primly on his lap, has kept his smiling eye on Shuuichi.

Shuuichi takes off his glasses to rub the indents they've left behind, to have an excuse to not look at Seiji or be looked at by him.

"Exorcising?" Seiji asks, as mildly as if asking him if he'd like tea.

Shuuichi puts his glasses back on and immediately perches his arm on the window, peering out from it. "What else would I be doing out here?"

"Filming."

Shuuichi laughs at the idea. "If they'd let me go alone in this kind of weather, it'd be a company I want nothing to do with."

"That is true."

He doesn't mean to catch Seiji's eye by his ghost-like reflection on the tinted window, but he does. "And you? What brings you to the countryside?"

"Also exorcising." He smiles. "What else is there, indeed."

Shuuichi makes himself focus on those distant hills, those looming clouds.

The sound of silence might be worse than their paltry attempts at conversation. Not even the car, motor quiet, offers a distraction. This is a black box they're in, this box Shuuichi is familiar with from dalliances past where he's pushed Seiji down into these leather seats. The seats appear clean. If they could speak, the things they would say.

"You're dripping," Seiji says.

"What do you expect, I was in the rain."

He winds a finger around a lock of his long hair. "But you're getting my seats wet."

Shuuichi is oh-so-close to saying something in line with the liaisons these seats have witnessed. But he stifles it, ignores Seiji's lithe form a seat away, clothes concealing a body he knows well. There is nothing to be had between them. "I was in the rain," he repeats. "You picked me up, anyway. Your choice to have me mess up your seats."

Seiji exhales in what might be a laugh.

Shuuichi frowns. "What?"

"You're less fun when you fail to get riled up by my comments. As if these seats haven't seen worse from us."

His mouth falls open but no sound comes out. The warm growth in the tips of his ears is all too strong, though.

"Ah, there we go. There's the morally upright Natori Shuuichi who appears only when his own virtue is affronted. Stunned to silence he might be, but it only makes him more endearing, if hypocritical."

Shuuichi crosses his arms. It makes his wet clothes cling to him more uncomfortably. But he stays like that, keeping himself closed off, leaning pointedly against the door, teeth forcing his tongue into its obedient place.

"At least," Seiji says a moment later, "take off your hat."

Another moment passes. Shuuichi gives him a wary look. "I'm not going to have sex with you. If that's why you picked me up, I'll get out right now."

Seiji's visible eyebrow goes up; his dark iris is a circle surrounded fully by white. Then he laughs: clear and light, glass being struck. "Sorry to disappoint, but that wasn't my intent. Your hat is soaked. It can't be comfortable for you to have it on."

He's right about that. Shuuichi twists his mouth, not wanting to concede something Seiji had suggested, but he really would like to take it off. Grudgingly, he does, placing it on the floor. He runs a hand through his hair, flattened wet at the top.

"I apologize for not offering you a towel or something of the sort. They're not really things I carry with me."

"It's fine." He looks back out the window, thinking that the end of the conversation, but something soft thrown to a rumple at his lap makes him whirl around.

"You can use that as a blanket," Seiji says, missing his suit jacket. "A poor substitution, but better than nothing."

Shuuichi uncrosses his arms, hand lingering above the jacket, eyes on the foreign brand name on its tag. "This jacket was obviously expensive. I can't use it so cheaply."

"It's just clothes. If need be, I can get a new one. But you're only getting it wet and dry cleaning exists." His dress shirt is as white as his eyepatch, but where his eyepatch creases along his face's contours, his dress shirt is impeccably stiff, buttoned to the very bottom of his Adam's apple.

Shuuichi tucks a finger beneath his own collar, widening it, the car's AC cool on his damp skin. His eyes are on the sloped corner of the window. "Thank you," he mumbles, draping the jacket over himself. It's still warm. As he adjusts it, one of the lapels brushes his nose, and Seiji's scent has not left it either. His lids close in a blink too deep before he picks his head up, wondering if Seiji had caught his lapse in judgment.

Seiji's upbringing had mandated the best of manners, the highest etiquette. It never came off quite that way – his edges cut through all he does – but he did at least, insincere as he might sound or act, practice them, even to Shuuichi. But now he doesn't offer him anything. Not a _You're welcome_ , not a smile, not a shrug. He only studies Shuuichi, unnervingly so, and then preoccupies himself with what is outside the window.

Silence should befit them. They can't seem to go long without thorns adorning their words; saying nothing should keep their skin unhurt. What Shuuichi has found is that the _should_ s floating over them were not the reality that had curdled between them. This silence worsens that thickness they've allowed time to ferment, made thicker by their entrapment here ripe with old encounters that were anything but silent.

The hills had flattened to fields, and these are soon giving way to the city's outskirts. Shuuichi could have spent one hour or one year here with Seiji; he does not know how truthful time is. Being near him bends the whole of everything like that.

The seat under Shuuichi squeaks with the minutest movement. He watches the city out of the window like it's the most interesting thing he's ever seen. A street flits past that he recognizes. Another squeak, too loud in this quiet blackness, as he looks Seiji in the eye. "You can just drop me off here. I can take a bus home; they run quicker here."

"I can't have that. I'll take you directly home."

 _Squeak_ , leaning on the door. He's not sure what to think about that: is it politeness, is it a scheme? "Well, okay." A thought. "I've never told you where I live."

Seiji looks like a snake who has caught its prey. "Did you think I didn't know?" He slides to the seat Shuuichi occupies, keeping to his right at a distance disturbingly tantalizing. His focus is not Shuuichi, though; his neck is craned, muscles taut with smooth valleys between them, to the sliding window separating passengers from driver. Seiji opens the window and tells the driver Shuuichi's address. Then he returns to his seat, diagonal to Shuuichi, smile slick as the rain-battered pavement they drive on.

Opposing emotions mingle in him. It's unsettling Seiji knows. It's moving he'd wanted to know and had found out. It's frustrating he knew and had done nothing until now.

But the thought of Seiji stopping by his place is laughable and inconceivable. Maybe in another life it would have happened. In this one, they hoard secrets from each other; they walk parallel paths where each can see the other but where neither can cross without treading the mud separating them, without dirtying their legs.

And they often brave that mud. To hurl sharp unkindnesses at the other, to better glare in unyielding dissent, to grasp the other and wonder in deafening silence what had gone wrong.

They come to a smooth stop. The driver slides open the window.

"Matoba-sama," he says, "the road is blocked. The rain and road visibility are getting worse as well."

"Can you find an alternate route?"

"I can, but if this road is blocked, I would think others are also affected."

"It's fine, I can walk home," Shuuichi says.

Seiji smirks. "Of all the unintelligent things you've ever said, that takes the top spot."

"You've done enough," Shuuichi insists, yet he pulls the jacket closer to him.

"Sir, if I may," the driver says, "you do have a residency near here."

Seiji's elegant hand curls under his chin. "Do I..."

The little things are adding up and it turns Shuuichi upside down. Has Seiji planned all this? It's improbable, but the man has the gift of crafting possibilities from impossibilities.

"Would you be my guest for the night?" Seiji says, and it takes a moment for Shuuichi to realize he's addressing him.

There could be a hotel nearby. That would be safer for his heart. But he has no change of clothes and neither would the hotel. And the Matoba houses are roomy, not always occupied but kept neat. They would be in different rooms, they would keep their distance like beasts whose territories overlapped. But should they meet regardless-

Shuuichi shuts his eyes, massages his temples, returning himself to the present from a potential future born of an irrefutable past. "If you don't mind," he says, more to the floor than to Seiji.

Seiji's reply is an inscrutable smile.

The driver turns back. The flooded roads have choked those unobstructed with cars trying a different way home, taking up more room than these roads are used to. Headlights red and orange, blurred through the rain, glower at Shuuichi. Traffic is at a standstill and he drums his fingers on his leg, the cloth drier.

"Patience," Seiji says, "is a virtue."

Shuuichi rolls his eyes. He sneezes.

"Do you want the heat to be turned up?"

"I'm fine," he replies, obstinately facing the window, determined to say or do nothing else until they reach the Matoba residence.

"Suit yourself. If you get sick, it leaves more jobs for me."

It's definitely meant to make him snappily retort, something showing Seiji that Shuuichi is ever affected by him. He knows this; this is how they are. And it's terrifyingly easy to fall victim to it. Shuuichi firmly draws his mouth together, leans against the door with an eye twitching.

Seiji certainly has more to say; when doesn't he. Strangely, he keeps it to himself, and the uncomfortable silence uncoils itself, smug in its return. It is a graveyard silence, ghosts of memories surrounding them, unsaid words buried like corpses under their tongues. The car's gloomy interior is even hearse-like, Shuuichi notes.

Fitting.

Progress through traffic is slow but it is completed many eternities later, with the car rolling in front of a typical suburban home: squished yet tall, fond of neutral tones. A house this car and this family are out of place with. Shuuichi would laugh if he wasn't so desperate to be inside a warm building, regardless of its appearance or proprietor.

The driver exits with his own umbrella; Seiji reaches for the one he'd used before.

"Shall we?" he asks, a corner of his mouth quirked up.

The driver opens their door, the rain drowning out the silence. Seiji, opening his umbrella, steps out first. He turns back to Shuuichi, offering him a hand, the other corner of his mouth quirking up too.

How much of this is chance? How much of this has been planned? He looks at Seiji's hand. His eye.

He grabs his hat from the floor and takes Seiji's hand with lips pursed. It's cool, callused by a lifetime of archery. The umbrella is large and fits them both, though not with a wide berth between them. They each keep to one side of the umbrella's steel shaft. A sudden cold metal touch at Shuuichi's arm lets him know he's walked too close to Seiji's half, and he hurriedly steps aside, shoes splashing on the growing puddles along the short walk to the door.

The driver has opened the house's door and helps them in, umbrellas dripping like wet dogs, door closing and shutting the rain out, shutting them in once more. Seiji gives the driver his umbrella as well as orders to make sure Nanase knows where he is and what's happened. The driver – a servant, really, if he's doing this much – disappears to make the call.

"You're used to that, aren't you," Shuuichi mumbles to himself.

But Seiji, flipping on the entrance lights, hears. "Used to what? Giving orders?" A smile so slight it is a mockery – to Shuuichi and maybe even to himself. "Of course I am. I have to be." His eyes fall over Shuuichi like the rain that had sodden him, but this clings to his skin more than the wet clothes themselves. They swiftly travel up, settling on- "Your jacket."

Shuuichi blinks. Glances down at it, loosens his grip on it. "You mean _your_ jacket."

"Yes. I can take it from you," he says, but doesn't wait for Shuuichi's affirmation; he steals it back, an unusual cold enveloping Shuuichi. Seiji folds it over his arm. "I'll find you a change of clothes. Stay here."

Given where he is, that brings a frown to his face, despite the rationality of Seiji's statement. "I'm not someone you can order around."

Seiji considers him with a look as blank as paper. "You're right."

He turns on his heel, tightly, his hair like a paintbrush swishing, the last Shuuichi sees of him as Seiji rounds a corner.

Shuuichi's exhale is unsteady. He cups his elbow and in spite of Seiji, as well as his own curiosity, goes to explore the house.

He flips on the living room lights. It doesn't seem as if anyone has ever sat in that furniture.

 _And who am I to judge_ , he thinks, letting darkness reclaim the room.

He wanders down the hallway, retracing Seiji's footsteps. The beige walls are empty. Any other family – a normal family – would have covered them in mementos.

Hesitantly, he drops his hand from his elbow. _There's nothing Seiji would want to remember_. He presses his fingertips to the wall as if he might hear it speak this way and get the truth out of something in Seiji's life, because it certainly isn't coming from the man himself.

No reply.

He blows air out of his nose in a self-deprecating mimicry of a laugh. _Obviously_.

He goes to the hallway perpendicular to this one. It has a few rooms. He glimpses into the one nearest him, prodding the door open with his toe. It swings open soundlessly, revealing a room that, despite the darkness, is something out of a catalog: clean, pretty, unlived in.

He closes the door and returns to the hall he'd been asked to remain in. Just as well, as feet come soft on the wood floor. Seiji, clothes in his hands, gives them to Shuuichi, who thanks him.

"The bathroom is in that hallway," Seiji says, motioning with his head. "The second room to your left."

Shuuichi tries not to walk too fast, though he wants to. His clothes – dried stiff at certain spots, clinging wetly to him in others – have been making him more uncomfortable than he already is. He changes out of them and grabs what Seiji had given him. It's a yukata, blue as night, obi darker.

 _Of course this is the_ _type of_ _clothing he has lying around_ , he thinks, holding it up.

Has Seiji used it?

He's already wrapped the yukata around himself when he wonders this. Heat is quickly on his cheeks, and he ties the whole thing up in a hurry, fumbling out of the bathroom, bumping into Seiji. Immediately Shuuichi steps back, offering an apology, avoiding Seiji's eye. It might be dark, but he knows where it is in relation to him as a sailor might read the North Star. It's how Shuuichi has navigated Seiji this long – knowing where and when he is looking.

Silence creeps in, empty in an emptier house.

Another voice interrupts it, mercifully. The driver returns, letting Seiji know the call has been made and that they're expected at the main estate by eight tomorrow.

"I'm afraid that for Matoba-sama to be timely I'll have to drive you to your house quite early, Natori-dono," he finishes with an apologetic dip of his head.

"No, you don't have to," Shuuichi says, resisting the urge to hide his clothes behind his back as if holding them while wearing something of Seiji's means anything. Though he does angle himself away from him. "I can walk myself home."

"Oh?" Seiji says. "And if the roads are flooded still?"

"A taxi, then."

"If that doesn't work out, you're welcome to stay here as long as you need."

Shuuichi should be grateful for his generosity. But he cannot help scrutinizing Seiji's intentions down to their bones, chewing the marrow to tastelessness. There is always something hidden in his every action, spoken or not. He doesn't thank him, doesn't even grant him a nod. He looks away.

Seiji makes no indication of being offended at the lack of response. He turns to the driver. "I believe this house has four bedrooms. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir. I've checked them; one is downstairs, the rest are on the second floor. The housekeeper has been here recently and I trust you'll find them in excellent shape despite their disuse. There is also food, but it's nonperishable only."

"Food is food." Seiji flings a smile at Shuuichi. "Apologies to the guest for our piddling menu."

He shrugs, smothering the effects of Seiji's purposeful ingratiating everything. "I don't mind."

"I'll manage to prepare something," the driver says. "I will take your clothing as well, Natori-dono. Thank you. Please, do excuse me." With a bow, he withdraws.

Seiji turns to Shuuichi, shadows on his face adjusting to this new angle, and that sharp insolence of his seems to blunt. "I'll see you up," he says, brushing past Shuuichi as he heads for the stairs.

It's not a long stairwell, but with Seiji's leisured pace, the climb lasts and lasts with nothing said.

"I can't believe this is one of your houses," Shuuichi suddenly says, hand on the banister, eyes on the naked walls.

A chuckle. "We are in the twenty-first century. It's been my prerogative to ascertain the clan welcomes it. In arts as ancient as ours, failure to do so leads to downfall." At the top of the stairwell, they linger. "While the natural death of other clans has gained me their property, for some houses – certainly the ones you associate with me – it's simply been that the original families were too stubborn to change, and so they died in their own way." He lifts his eyes from him and languidly points to the closest bedroom. "Yours for the night."

Shuuichi swallows down a simultaneously bitter and hopeful taste. Seiji is saying he can change. The clan, anyway. The clan can change. As for himself...

"However," Seiji continues, "we bought this house. It's nicely close to the city, for the more professional jobs we take on."

"You mean exorcisms for politicians and the like, not old people in kimonos."

Seiji's airy laugh trails after him as he goes to his own room. Only when the hallway has drunk in its last syllable does Shuuichi walk to his room, turning on the lamp by the bed.

It's not quite a duplicate of the first room he'd seen, as the room's orientation has changed, but it's the same furniture, the same design. This is a place to stay in, not a place to live in. Like a hotel. For him as much as Seiji. He wriggles free the tucked-in bed covers, the revealed fitted bed sheet an unwrinkled white, the pillows plumped like they're new. He almost doesn't want to sleep here and ruin the immaculate presentation.

The suggestion of movement catches his eye. He swivels his head, expecting long hair and a sharp smile, and is met with his own reflection.

He sits on the bed, the mattress so firm it doesn't budge under his weight. He removes his glasses, setting them on the nightstand, and lets himself fall on his back. The ceiling is made of wood just as the floor, sanded smooth. There are no notches or shapes on it to find meaning in.

He sits up and sees that long hair and sharp smile under the doorframe. He yelps.

Seiji, in clothes matching Shuuichi's, blithely crosses his arms. "Am I that terrible a sight?" he says, and that smile isn't sharp. It's mild with a secret or two or a hundred.

"You could have knocked!"

"Your door was open. Maybe you shouldn't get so lost in your own thoughts or be so easily spooked. It's poor behavior for an exorcist."

Shuuichi's reply, thoughtless and curt as it was going to be, is kept unsaid when he remembers that is exactly what Seiji wants out of him. But he is in his house, being shown his own good will. _If it could be called that_.

"Anyway," Seiji says, "I came to tell you the food is ready. It won't be up to par with what we'd normally serve a guest, but it'll fill you for the night."

"You'd already apologized," Shuuichi says, standing and walking past him.

If Seiji replied, he doesn't hear it.

Two meals have been laid down in the dining room.

"Hatsuda-san said he would have felt out of place dining with us," Seiji explains. His eye crawls to Shuuichi's. "He did so out of respect for our ranks. He doesn't know."

There is no need to specify what it is the driver does not know.

Truthfully, Shuuichi had wanted him there, precisely to make ignoring the thorny vines wrapped around himself and Seiji easier. "I don't mind him eating with us."

"Neither did I, but he was adamant."

"Where is he?"

"You don't believe me?" His tone doesn't change. He might have asked him if it still rained.

"I-"

"He's in the living room," Seiji says, saving Shuuichi from answering his question. "You can ask him to join us if you like, but I already tried."

He does try. He receives a very polite, grandfatherly refusal.

"Damn your clan and its stubborn observation of tradition," he mutters, back in the dining room.

Seiji has already started eating. He looks up at him, chopsticks halfway to his mouth, and puts the vegetable slice into his curving mouth.

Shuuichi's seat is across from him. He pulls back the chair with a loud squeak and winces. He quickly sits down, not daring to scoot the chair in further in fear of getting another squeak, and mumbles a thanks before eating.

The clipping of chopsticks picking up food with beats of nothing in between, the barely audible sounds of Shuuichi eating – and, if he strains his ears, Seiji's – are worse than nails on chalkboard. Neither starts a conversation. They are here to eat and pretend they aren't sitting in front of one another in a Matoba house. When they are not together for business or pleasure, Shuuichi does not know what they are.

 _That's not right._ His chopsticks chase a pickled daikon. _I don't know what we are at any time_.

They don't talk. To try would be a farce. It is only marginally better than having something, however inane, replace their self-imposed silence.

The food isn't bad at all, especially given it's made from canned and pickled things. Shuuichi tells himself that's why he eats so fast. He washes his own dishes, uncomfortable with accepting Seiji's kind of life so readily, and takes the stairs up two at a time to his borrowed bed.

He only knows he'd fallen asleep when he wakes, disoriented, bed sheets patterned on his red cheek. Something like the whisper of paper had woken him. Indeed, a slip of paper is at the foot of his closed door. He goes to pick it up. 

_I found a bottle of sake. Join me downstairs if you like._

No name or signature. There is no one else it could be, after all.

Shuuichi crinkles the paper in his fist, considering his options. He could stay here, take entirely too long to fall asleep, and wake up as deep in discomfort as he is currently. Or he could bite his tongue and have a drink – just one – with Seiji, something to make falling asleep easier. A truce of sorts. It wears him down to his very being, trying to see into Seiji. Like this is a twisted actor's role never auditioned for but ongoing until-

Until one of them apologizes, says something with the thorns cut off. And that's as unlikely as the moon falling out of the sky. _Until one of us dies_ , he thinks, with a hollowness in his stomach. His throat has dried up, too. A drink wouldn't hurt, surely. They didn't need to talk for that either.

He pictures Seiji, a lone figure sitting at a long white table with his back to empty furniture in the dark, a single bulb above flickering on a glossy sake bottle and on a pristine cup raised to downturned lips. He pictures it, knows it for truth, and feels his hollowness filled by something small.

He goes down the stairs, thankful for their plushness absorbing the sound of his footsteps – he does not want to alert Seiji to his arrival at his request.

When he is at a stair low enough to see beyond the top of the dining room's doorframe, he pauses, looking at Seiji. It doesn't quite match what he'd imagined: there is no sake cup; he runs his finger around the top of a green bottle; his covered eye is the one in Shuuichi's direction, leaving whatever his expression might be a mystery. Though even if Shuuichi could see all of Seiji's face, he isn't certain he could read his intentions.

Down eight more steps, then he's stalking to the dining room, watching Seiji, who does not watch him. Shuuichi takes the chair across from him – careful now, without the squeak to cut through the silence – and sits, folding his arms on the table.

Seiji stares down at the bottle, finger drawing a hum from its rim.

"Where's Hatsuda-san?" Shuuichi asks.

Seiji flits his eye up. He smiles, ceasing tracing the bottle, but its low reverberations continue to hum in Shuuichi's teeth. "You're making this out to be like a police interrogation." Seiji across from him, having waited, fluorescent lights harsh on his skin, a table nearly empty, Shuuichi strolling in after letting Seiji simmer in his lonesome.

Damn it.

He doesn't want to admit Seiji is right, but he doesn't need to, as Seiji speaks.

"Hatsuda-san," he says, "has gone to sleep. Can you blame him? It's been quite the day for us."

He hears the sentence as it is said and once more when his mind repeats it. "You said 'us.'"

"I did." He raises the bottle, smile lopsided. "But I've chosen another method for dealing with today. Did you come here to partake in it with me, or are you here to be adorably huffy at me like always?"

"I'm not _huffy_ ," Shuuichi says, resting a hand on his cheek. It's warm.

Seiji gives a small laugh.

Quick as lightning, feeling just as hot, Shuuichi swipes the sake bottle and takes a hasty swig. As he does, he doesn't take his eyes off Seiji, who doesn't take his eyes off him. He sets the bottle down with a delicate _clink_ opposed to the ugly _ba-bump_ s in his ears.

"So all this really wasn't an elaborate way to get me to bed with you?" Shuuichi asks, sounding off even to himself.

"No," Seiji says after a pause.

"...why the pause?"

Seiji carefully reaches for the bottle, takes a delicate sip, and puts it down with even greater care. His robe rustles as he crosses his legs. "Because though I didn't foresee or plan anything about us today, I can't deny it didn't cross my mind to ask you for a night together."

The sake is well in front of Shuuichi, but from the sudden dizzy rush, it feels like he's downed an entire bottle of it.

They'd never been together. No such words were ever exchanged, neither as teenagers nor young adults. Once, they'd been soft with each other. Then they weren't. Simple as that.

It should have been simple, anyway, but they'd never quite stopped the intimacy, loveless and detached as it was. They didn't speak about it; if they slept together, they slept together, and after the euphoria of a desperate night that shouldn't have been collapsed, they walked upon their own paths once more.

Seiji runs a finger along the bottle's rim and comes away with a large drop wobbly on his finger. He looks at it. "But obviously I wasn't going to ask." He flicks his eye to Shuuichi. "I don't think you've ever been more uncomfortable with me than today."

"Ah," Shuuichi says, a little weak.

"I'm not the villain in your story. That's something of your own devising, I think to justify our continued involvement with each other, warped as it's become. Our lives are diametrically opposed, but I don't hate you, Shuuichi."

He says his name like a breeze between trees. His first name, bare, as it was on his lips years ago. _I_ _t_ _'_ _s the alcohol_ , Shuuichi thinks, hoping it is not.

"You're chatty," he says, needing the conversation to return to the old derision between them that he knows, a derision like a scab incessantly picked at, unable to heal.

"And you're listening."

He draws in his bottom lip, chafing pressure where his teeth dig onto the fleshy tissue. He grabs the bottle while his eyes stay on a wall in the darkness. His sip is careless and a bit flows down the side of his mouth. He wipes it away, setting the bottle down, pushing it to Seiji, who takes an immediate drink. For three turns they pass it like that, messy kisses through a glass intermediary, the bottle's rim wetter yet warmer every time.

Before his fourth drink, Shuuichi frowns down at the table. Up to Seiji. "Why aren't we using cups?" The words don't yet slur. That's good. Getting drunk with Seiji here would be too much, would result in unpredictable things. "For you, this seems uncouth."

"I couldn't find any, believe it or not."

"So much for your clan's refinement."

Seiji's laugh is as clear as the sake, as intoxicating. "It is shameful, isn't it?" He steals the bottle and tips it so the alcohol flows horizontally within it without yet spilling. A green lake trapped by glass. "But," he says, watching the sake slosh and ripple and still, "this isn't so terrible, either." He brings the bottle to his thin lips, a peek of pink tongue catching a few drops. He slides it to Shuuichi with a smug satisfaction dulled by the drink.

Shuuichi, suddenly and intensely aware of the yukata soft on his skin, looks at the sake like it's a test. It probably is. It never ends. He wants to refute it, he wants to accept it and win it, he just wants a damn drink.

He goes for the latter, quelling all doubts with the drink strong on his tongue and down his throat. Unlike Seiji, he's not careful in putting down the bottle, and it is in danger of toppling over. He catches it to settle it just as Seiji does, Shuuichi's hand poised over his, pale as the moon. They each retract. Seiji's hand skitters to his lap, Shuuichi's beneath his thigh.

Shuuichi isn't sure how long he sits there with nothing to say, lost inside himself, current presence forgotten, but eventually he is returned to his body when his jaw creaks open to ask, "Do you remember when we were younger?"

"What specific time?"

He lets out a stream of air through his nose. "Just in general."

"I remember."

The way Seiji says it is so different from the glass shards he litters his speech and actions with that it makes Shuuichi look up. His expression is distant. Seeing things that are not there – and not youkai. The ghosts of their past are something else entirely.

That strange pensiveness soon vanishes, the Seiji carved from stone sitting in front of him once more. "Why did you ask?"

He raises a shoulder.

Seiji laughs behind his hand, finger joints tiny elevations on his body map that Shuuichi has seen – as now – and touched – as before. "Are you a sentimental drunk, Shuuichi-san?"

His ears ring with his own name, unspoken in this manner in some time. Reminiscent of their before. "No."

"A pity. I was certain you'd segue into woeful rhetorical questions."

"Like what? 'Were you happy then?'" The question comes far too easily to be spontaneous.

Seiji takes the bottle, sipping thoughtfully. "Yes," he says, drink down. "Like that."

"Or 'what if we'd never met?'" Again so smoothly sliding out from him.

"Ah." His forefinger's nail taps the bottle, a dull _clink_ that would have startled a more sober Shuuichi. "Now there's something to consider." _Clink_. "I think, regardless of other choices we might have made, we would have met." _Clink_. "Perhaps not as... directly as we did." _Clink_. "But this world of ours is too small and our prides too large. We'd have met." _Clink_. "We could not have stopped it anymore than we could stop a storm."

Shuuichi bites the tip of his tongue. Lets it go. "I guess we know who's the sentimental drunk between us."

Seiji stops tapping the bottle. His one-eyed gaze falls on Shuuichi, something flashing in it. "I'm not being sentimental. I was stating the truth. Do you really think there is any possibility we never would have met?"

For all the hypotheticals Shuuichi has entertained about it, each time altering the reason he'd never met Seiji, he'd never believed any of them could have happened. Seiji is right. The threads of their lives became too entwined when they were born seeing what few could.

He wordlessly picks up the bottle, craving half of it at least, but he gets only a few gulps' worth until only meager drops spill out. He eyes it with dislike and distrust. "We're done already?"

"I'd started drinking it before you got here."

Worry overtakes him; he studies Seiji like a book, reading into the crease between his visible eyebrow and the hidden one, the humorless quirk of his lip, the lack of color on his cheeks. "You don't look drunk."

"I'm not. I'm not sober, but I'm not getting drunk in front of a guest."

"Well," Shuuichi says, straightening, "neither am I."

"Perish the thought." He rests his elbow on one palm and leans onto the other. "Then who'd keep me company?"

"You have a whole clan at your disposal."

Seiji says he's not sober, but it's what his expression portrays, clearing into something concealing his true thoughts. "You know as well as I do," he says, voice calm and low, "that blood ties mean nothing."

The hand Shuuichi had kept beneath his leg crawls to his nape, mindlessly fiddling with the soft hair there as he searches for something, anything on the ceiling to distract him. Heaviness in his mouth renders him unable to speak.

He tries anyway, realizing something in the perfect nothingness of the wood ceiling. "You didn't answer my first question. If you were happy then."

"Did you want me to? I thought you were just indulging my thoughts."

"You answered the other one," he replies, neck warming up.

Seiji's eye and lip swing down. His fingers on his cheek curl lightly. Enough time passes with him like that that Shuuichi thinks he won't answer, that this is a wordless dismissal, an _I've had my fun, you can leave now_ that all his encounters with Seiji feel like. Just as he hesitantly gets up, believing this was Seiji's intent, the stagnancy is wiped with a, "Yes."

He blinks at Seiji, connecting this single late word to the question earlier posed, almost forgotten. 'Yes.' He'd been happy then. When they'd been young and foolish and something more tangible than now.

The heavy feeling in his mouth drops down to his chest, fighting for room between his ribs and lungs. It squeezes the air out of him, but it leaves enough for him to murmur one last thing.

"I was, too."

He pushes his chair in and heads upstairs.

He lets himself fall on the mattress like it's an old lover, having forgotten how stiff it was. The briefness of his fall and the discomfort it brings is somewhat deserved. He rolls on his side to rub the sore spot on his back, but despite it just having happened, it lies distant on his mind. Its forefront has not let go of Seiji, softened by the sake and talk of better days. A Seiji so rare it might seem a fabrication, an aspect of him rehearsed to appease Shuuichi. But it isn't. It's only that the bark Seiji has allowed around himself has grown thick these past years. Many layers below, struggling for air, is the Seiji he'd known once. The Seiji surfacing after drinks in a night spiraled out of control, with every cosmic turn of irony that could be abided. The Seiji who'd been happy once; the Seiji who'd admitted to lust, who'd succumbed to it on other charged occasions.

Shuuichi mumbles a curse – nothing an exorcist might utter, just a young man angry at himself, at Seiji, at the thing tying them irrevocably together – and he stumbles out of bed, reaches the door in a few strides, sends it flying, comes face-to-face with Seiji looking more shocked than what Shuuichi's own expression must be.

They do not exchange words. They exchange their surprise to surrender, with Shuuichi tugging Seiji, Seiji allowing it. He kisses him like a soldier come back from a long war – but the very battlefront he's bled in is the man he holds close to him. Seiji's nails dig onto his back, a pleasurable pain, a prayer for more. The bed is too far, Shuuichi's need too great; he drags Seiji to the wall, pushing him against it as if he means for them to fall through it. Part of him might. But the part of him in control now means to bunch his hands on Seiji's hair, when did he let it get this long; to use his tongue to remember what Seiji tastes like, wasn't it sweeter before; to kick away the _what-could-have-been_ s and _what-could-be_ s and take in broken, grateful gasps of whatever this is, this disfigured _now_ they return to like moths to a flame.

He presses his knee between Seiji's legs, not forcefully, just a reminder: he's here, Seiji is here, and this is them.

"Shuuichi," Seiji breathes, all complexities that they are condensed into his name.

And he swallows it. Doesn't let Seiji say anything except meaningless softness as he slips a hand free from the tangle of his hair to the underside of his yukata, seeking skin, seeking a weaker mumble of his name.

His hand flutters from Seiji's chest to his hip, thumbing the flare of bone, and it draws Seiji violently closer to him, makes Shuuichi wobble backward with Seiji's lips still between his teeth. Seiji persists, Shuuichi stepping back a stagger at a time until the backs of his knees bump into the bed.

 _You could have just told me what you wanted_ , he thinks, twisting around to press Seiji down onto the bed. Or, from the knowing glitter in Seiji's eye and the curl of his lip, maybe he says it.

One hand supports his weight above Seiji, yukata pulled by gravity to graze against his; his other reaches behind Seiji's head, blindly undoing the ribbon, tossing it carelessly. Admiring how his hair finely pillows around him. Graceful even vulnerable like this.

Seiji takes Shuuichi's hand and brushes his lips against the spot where his lizard crawls. As if he's just played with fire, Shuuichi steals his hand back, pulse magnified where Seiji had kissed it.

"Are you afraid of my touch," Seiji says, eye half-lidded, voice quiet, "or that your youkai will seep into me?"

It's a worry without foundation – years with the lizard, years of interaction with others, and it has always stayed with him. But with Seiji's spiritual power, a what-if dances in the back of Shuuichi's mind. "The latter."

"That's not going to happen." He sweeps away a lock of hair fallen over his eyepatch. "Even if it did, what's one more youkai after me?"

Shuuichi's heart pangs. "Seiji-"

"I've kissed it before." He puts a single finger to the inside of Shuuichi's right thigh. "Not that you could tell it was there. And as you can see, nothing happened."

Shuuichi's exhale is dragged out of him by the sight of the characters on Seiji's eyepatch, so black and arcane the darkness in the room shudders before it, shrinks away from them. The lamp's feeble light seems brighter than it is, the old ink on the eyepatch gleaming fresh as blood, blood once flowing down the very thing it covers.

He puts his hand to it without thinking. Beneath him, Seiji is motionless. Shuuichi's finger curls below the eyepatch as he leans down, eyes closing, and Seiji turns his head to the side so that Shuuichi's lips skim his cheek.

"This isn't going to work, Natori-san."

That honorific tagged to his surname is like a hangnail. A tissue just as small and as painful is ripped off something in him. He slowly opens his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"We will never be truly together unless we change how we are." He moves Shuuichi's hand away from his face. "Are you willing to change?"

"Are you?" he shoots back, to say something other than his answer both of them know, just as Seiji's lack of answer is unneeded. The swell of the silence is obvious.

Shuuichi gets off him, turning on his side, arm cradling his head. He glances to a dark corner where ceiling meets wall; he hears Seiji's clothes whisper as he shifts his posture. Likely putting more distance between them. It's what Shuuichi would do if he had any feeling in his legs. "Are we just going to keep at... this," he says, "until we get sick of it? Until we die?"

"Or until one of us moves on."

That shouldn't sting. They're not anything, they're just two people who don't know the boundary between love and desire and who have no one else. It shouldn't sting, but should Shuuichi cast his eyes down, there might be a stab wound on his chest with Seiji's hand still tight on the knife.

"You have to admit this is easier," Seiji continues, and it nearly gets a brief, dry bark of disbelief from Shuuichi. "We aren't beholden to each other. It's a matter of... need and convenience. It'll end when it ends."

Though he does not know what he will reply to that, Shuuichi flips to him. And in looking at him, he remembers himself signing off a contract nothing to do with the supernatural and perhaps more binding than that. A laugh escapes him.

"What?" Seiji asks, tilting his head up to look at him.

"In my contract," he says, "it says I can't date anyone. If my agency found out what I was up to, I think my manager would faint."

The only thing that moves on Seiji's face is his mouth. "We aren't dating."

"I know, but this is the kind of thing they oblige us to avoid." He laughs again, but it comes out more forced than intended. "Actually, this is worse."

Seiji flops back, closing his eye, head settling on the pillow. "How your female fans would cry should they find out not only your preferences but what you were doing in the shadows."

Shuuichi frowns at him. "Are you sleeping here?"

"Yes. I've already made myself comfortable." He briefly peeks an eye at him, expression somehow stiller. "I'll leave in the morning."

"But-"

"Hatsuda-san won't see me."

"That's not-"

"Goodnight, Natori-san," he says, swiftly turning around with the bed sheets pulled up to his shoulder.

What Shuuichi had wanted to say stutters to its death behind his pursed lips. He sighs. Looks at the back of Seiji's head, black hair swept along the pillow and beneath the sheets where Shuuichi can't see.

 _Did he always let his hair down at night?_ he wonders. They've slept together, but never like this in its sincerest definition. Shuuichi is familiar with the things Seiji does when he's in him, not by him. He doesn't know what Seiji does as he ends his days. Shuuichi's eyes trace the slim line of Seiji's body, uncovered head to blanketed feet. _Th_ _is is_ _just how we ended up_. It's a statement of truth, one he's often repeated in his mind, under his breath. In this invocation, it rings emptily, a bell's call muffled.

He shuffles as close to his corner of the bed as he can and turns on his side, opposite Seiji, their backs to each other. Enough room is in between them so that if Seiji tosses in his sleep, Shuuichi won't be in the way.

 _It'd be funny if he did_ , Shuuichi thinks, closing his eyes and seeing a restless Seiji in his mind. Matoba Seiji, ever composed in the path he'd chosen, haunted by decisions unmade or ignored when he set himself down to sleep. How human that would be.

Seiji was born human, but in this life he was born into and made his own, his sacrifices had chipped away at him, left the smiling mask he never removed as something not quite natural. Not a youkai, but not a full human. He even dressed to pass as a youkai, to better blend with what he hunts, to escape the sight of the thing hunting him.

It had all gone wrong somewhere for the both of them. In retrospect, it wasn't a singular event to be pinpointed. The little things dripped together, swelled to a tidal wave, washed them on this shore with hacking lungs and a refusal to ask the other what had led them here.

Perhaps that they would drift apart was as inevitable as their first coming together.

Shuuichi is on his side and his stomach still sinks down to his feet.

* * *

He's waking up, mind halfway between the real and imagined worlds, when he realizes the pressure on his back and around his chest is very much happening. His heart rate immediately shoots up, mentally considering every possibility. And when he cranes his head over his shoulder, sees the strange room he's in, sees the mess of black hair from someone's head pressed directly on his back, Shuuichi remembers he'd slept at one of Seiji's houses with Seiji next to him. Who is now, it seems, holding on to him as if any lighter hold would separate them.

Shuuichi quickly turns his head back around, exhaling shakily. There is no clock on the table, but by the thin stream of light from the windows, it's time they get going where each of them needs to be.

"Seiji," he hisses to the air in front of him. The weak sunlight does not hit him here, yet his cheeks burn.

Seiji does not respond.

He should speak close to his ear. He rests his chin on his shoulder, talking back to him, lips brushing the silky top of his head. "Seiji, wake up."

He stirs, hands encircling Shuuichi slightly relaxing. He presses his head firmer to Shuuichi's back, wearing down on his vertebrae to leave his imprint, a sign he was there.

Shuuichi ignores the confused fuss his heart is making and squirms loose from Seiji, facing him. "Matoba-san," he says, steady and indifferent, acting at its finest, "you have somewhere to be."

Strands of Seiji's hair have fallen in front of his face. He brushes them aside, blinking blearily. Sharp recognition of where he is and what he is doing come quick, and he gets up smoothly, picking his ribbon up from the floor, slipping out without a word.

Shuuichi looks at the dip Seiji had made on the bed. It is deep and close to himself. Seiji had slept most of the night that way.

He looks to the door. Gets up, meaning to find Seiji and ask him where he's supposed to go to get his clothes. Ask him why he'd clung to him in his sleep.

He laughs quietly, shaking his head. He's not asking that, obviously. He doesn't really want to ask him for his clothes, either; the sooner they keep to themselves, the better. In the living room he sees Hatsuda-san, dressed and completely awake; he returns him his clothes, crisp and dry. Shuuichi heads back upstairs to his room to change, making the bed as best as he can, putting the borrowed clothes neat on top. He checks he has his belongings – he does – and regards his reflection. His hair is mussed, but he's without his products; trying to fix it with his fingers will worsen it.

 _As soon as I'm home, I'm showering_ , he decides, leaving the room, thoughtlessly knuckling his spine, the bones Seiji had nestled into.

Outside the room, he sees a rectangle of light down the hall coming through a door ajar. Seiji. He follows the light.

The door is open wide enough that he can see Seiji fixing his tie – yesterday's tie, yesterday's suit. He's not tied his hair yet. It streams down his back, the short sides framing his face.

Shuuichi walks in.

Seiji glances at him. "No knock?"

"'Your door was open,'" Shuuichi says with an easy smile bordering on the smug, leaning on the door. He catches Seiji's small, brief smile on the mirror.

Seiji's usual ribbon is on the counter, wound up on itself. He grabs it from one end, uncoiling it, a snake prepared to strike-

"Wait," Shuuichi blurts.

Seiji's expression is quizzical.

"Let me do your hair," Shuuichi says, walking behind Seiji before he's given approval.

"What do you know about that?"

"You learn some things sitting in hair and makeup as long and as often as I do." He gently cups Seiji's hair, lets it run through his fingers like water. "Are you seeing anyone today?"

"After a meeting at my estate, I have to finish yesterday's job. An eccentric entrepreneur requested us."

"So more casual than your usual non-exorcist clients." Shuuichi gathers Seiji's hair in both hands. "I think you can get away with a half bun."

"What's that?"

Shuuichi peeks over Seiji's right shoulder, their eyes meeting on the mirror. "Let me show you."

"Don't take long," Seiji nonchalantly says, but he's smiling.

Shuuichi threads his fingers through Seiji's hair, root to tip. He hasn't washed it today, but it retains yesterday's silkiness; it parts evenly, without knots. He leaves a few locks to frame Seiji's face as he separates the longer ones into top and bottom halves. Root to tip, root to tip in careful strokes. The movement makes Seiji's head bob to and fro like something floating in the ocean. Shuuichi notes he's closed his eye. Surrendered to his touch. Found, if for a moment, peace.

A smile finds its way to Shuuichi's face.

He pulls back the top half of Seiji's thin hair, holds it with one hand, reaches for the ribbon with the other, and deftly ties it around the hair.

Shuuichi looks at it. "Hmm."

"What?"

"I think this might be nicer than a half bun," he says, hand idly going over Seiji's hair, the ribbon's white tails. "A bun would hide the ribbon, but it goes with your dress shirt. It just looks nice." Realizing what his hand is doing, he quickly takes it away.

Seiji contemplates his reflection, tilting this way and that to see how his hair turned out. "It does." He turns around, facing Shuuichi, and the small difference that gathering his hair like this makes in opening up his face, in changing how Shuuichi sees him, briefly halts his heart beat. "Thank you, Shuuichi."

His heart gives out again, holding on to the sound of his own name.

"Matoba-sama, Natori-dono," comes a creaky voice from downstairs, "I do think it is best to leave now to be in time for your meeting." Hatsuda-san did not come up the stairs to speak, but Shuuichi briskly steps away from Seiji as if he had, as if they'd been discovered being anything but acerbic to each other.

Seiji cups his elbows with a hint of his usual simper. "Ah. Yes. We need to chaperon you home." His hair whirls as he turns sharply, leaving.

Shuuichi lingers in the bathroom, eyes down to the pristine white lines between blue tiles. They're back to this. When Shuuichi dares to think maybe they can be alright, Seiji puffs his cheeks and what Shuuichi had thought rebuilt is blown to the ashes they truly were.

 _It's who he is_ , he thinks to himself, going down the stairs. _I should know_.

It always happens so soon. _Almost like he's protecting himself_ _from anything more_. Shuuichi skips the last step, looking at Seiji, whose expression is polished to its shallow ideal.

"About time, Natori-san. Shall we?"

They're back to this.

He follows them out, slides onto the proffered car seat with as much unease as yesterday. He sits impossibly still, not wanting to hear the seat squeak under him. This will be a ride like one in the hearse this car reminds him of.

"We're lucky it's not raining anymore."

Shuuichi blinks. Seiji is looking impassively at him. There is no drum of rain on the rooftop. They'd gone outside the house with no umbrellas; they'd woken up to sunlight. He hadn't really realized.

"I don't know if enough time has passed for the streets to be driveable," he continues, "but we'll see, I suppose."

Shuuichi nods. _They'd better be_.

The silence, sought this time, remains until they pull up to Shuuichi's apartment complex. Hatsuda-san opens the door for him, the sunlight briefly blinding.

Shuuichi steps out, careful not to brush even his clothing against Matoba, thanking Hatsuda-san. His eyes fall to the curbside puddle the car is parked over, oily with sludge, speckled with debris.

"Until next time," lilts Seiji behind him.

He hesitates, but he looks back at Seiji. A glimmer is in his eye: he is aware of what he has said, of his implication this is not the last they see of each other. And he surely has an expectation for Shuuichi, a reaction that will make Seiji hold his power over him like an umbrella.

It's no power, is it? It's forced nonchalance. They've grown only in age. Their true selves regress with each encounter.

To hell with expectations.

"See you, Seiji," he says, natural as the round clouds overhead, and Seiji's lightning-flash of genuine surprise tastes sweet as rain. Here is Shuuichi's olive branch, tossed without a glance back.

They will meet again. Seiji had been right: in the scope of their world, in the narrow focus of their lives, it is inevitable. But whether Seiji retains this offer of reconciliation is entirely in his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> my friend, a fellow bio major, jokingly mentioned she didn't remember what [polarity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_polarity) was and it whiplashed me into remembering [this](https://fuanteinasekai.tumblr.com/post/185530264467/am-a-fan-of-todays-gag-natori-great-the-rain), whereupon i passed out and woke up to this already written. chemistry is best when u make it into gay metaphors


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